A sham princess

"COULD it be that the Princess was going to die?" Bert held his breath as the thought smote him. He could almost hear the beating of his heart as he stood motionless, arrested by the painful idea, and gazed with anxious eyes on his sleeping sister.

Prin had been ill for more than a week, so ill that the parish doctor had come every day to see her; but Bert had never thought of death before.

The idea having presented itself, was not easily to be dismissed. He looked at Prin's white, sunken face, at the dark veins on her forehead, at the thin, white hands that were folded on her bosom; he listened to her quick, difficult breathing, and his fear deepened. How could he bear it if Prin died?

It was a small, mean room in which the brother and sister lived. The dirty, sodden paper hung in strips from the wall; the flooring was rotten, with holes gaping here and there; the place reeked of damp and worse; the window, dim with dirt, looked on to a foul area; it was hardly a room in which any patient was likely to make a good recovery.

The bed on which the sick girl lay looked very comfortless. Yet some one had arranged the grimy pillows in the best way possible, so that she lay at ease, and tended her so carefully that her white skin and fair hair had a purity which contrasted strangely with her dingy surroundings. This was their neighbour, Mrs. Kay, a woman who lived on the floor above, a native of Scotland, but who retained few traces of her Scotch upbringing save a faint and somewhat intermittent belief in the virtues of cleanliness. Bert had been wont to speak of her as the "cross old woman," for she had a sharp tongue and little patience with the ways of children; but she had not been cross at all since Prin fell ill, a fact which now struck Bert as ominous.

Bert knew what was the matter with his sister. She had had measles, and now, as he had heard the doctor say, they were succeeded by bronchitis. Bert himself had had measles; in fact, he had conveyed the infection to the Princess; but his ailment had been over in a couple of days. Clearly this "brownkitus," as he called it, was a much more serious thing.

Prin had been fretful and restless all day, but now at last she slept. As he watched her deep slumber, Bert took comfort from it. "If she sleep, she shall do well," he said to himself, not aware that he was making a quotation, though the words were a fleeting reminiscence of a Scripture lesson.

Suddenly, as he thought thus, there arose an uproar in the street above. It was never a quiet street by day or night. Fights and rows were of frequent occurrence, so that Bert was not surprised, though he was much annoyed when the sound of angry voices in hot altercation broke on his ear. If Prin were suddenly roused and affrighted, she would lose all the good that this sleep was doing her.

Bert was up the area steps in a moment, to see what he could do. Some lads, considerably bigger than himself, were causing the disturbance. The ringleader of the mischief had taken up his position, with his back against the railings of the area, and was inviting the others to "come on." With more pluck than discretion, Bert flew at him.

"Get out of this," he cried, shoving against him with all his might; "you don't stand here and make a row. Get out, I say. My sister's below very ill, and I won't have her woke by you, you big, hulking brutes!"

It was not a conciliatory mode of address, and it was hardly calculated to secure quiet. On the contrary, it created a greater hubbub.

The lad thus assailed by Bert turned upon him with an oath, and dealt him a violent blow on the head. The others, foreseeing a new diversion, forgot their common quarrel and closed around Bert. It would have gone badly with him—for these young street ruffians had no hesitation in attacking one so unequally matched with them—had not the doctor's trap at that moment driven up to the door.

"What is all this about?" he demanded as he stepped out. At the sound of his authoritative voice the cowards took to their heels, and Bert emerged from their midst with a bleeding face and torn clothing.

"What have they done to you? Let me see," said the doctor, in sharp but not unkindly tones. "Why do you go with such boys as those? You did something to provoke them, I suppose?"

"I only told them to move on because my sister was asleep, and I did not want them to wake her," said Bert.

"Ah, and they did not choose to be commanded by you?" said the doctor. "Well, I advise you to be more diplomatic the next time you hold parley with the enemy. But now wash the blood from your face, and I'll put a piece of plaster over that cut for you. Oh, you live here, do you? So, I see it is your sister I am attending."

Bert wondered that the doctor should not know him again. He followed him down the dirty steps of the area. In a few minutes Bert's face was dressed, and the doctor turned his attention to the sleeping child, whom the noises without had failed to rouse.

"Please, sir, is she better?" asked Bert anxiously.

"She is," said the doctor decidedly, when he had made his examination, only partially waking the girl in doing so; "she really is better."

"Then you don't think, sir, that she will die?" said Bert.

"Die! What put that into your head? No, if only—" he paused, and glanced round the dismal room with rather a hopeless expression—"if only she could have good air and good food, I should say she might do well. What she wants is to be sent into the country as soon as she is a little better."

Bert's face fell. The country seemed to him as far-away as heaven. If Prin's recovery depended on her going there, the chances were sorely against her.

"Where is your mother?" asked the doctor.

Bert stared for a moment ere he replied,—

"We ain't got none. Our mother died ever so long ago; before I can remember."

"Then who is the woman I have always seen with you?"

"You mean Mrs. Kay. She's out just now, sir."

"Then Mrs. Kay takes care of you, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Bert, with considerable hesitation, however; "she does when—"

"When she is not drunk," he had been about to say, but he checked himself. He was not willing to expose the failings of one who during the last few days had proved herself so kind a neighbour.

"You have a father, of course?" said the gentleman.

"No, sir, not now," replied Bert; "he died in the hospital last summer."

Dr. Hurst looked keenly at the boy. His face was honest; his blue eyes had a frank, open expression. It was plain he was speaking the truth.

"Then who keeps you children?"

"We keeps ourselves, sir."

"What do you mean? You're too young to work for your living."

"I shall soon be eleven, sir," said Bert, stretching his diminutive frame to its utmost height, "and Prin's two years older. I sells papers of an evening, and sometimes matches, and runs errands for people; and Prin, she minds babies and helps Mrs. Kay. But the worst of it is, Prin is not strong, and she soon gets tired. I often have to work for her as well as myself."

"Upon my word you are a brave little man," said the doctor, looking at him admiringly. He had already perceived that these children—the boy with his open, intelligent face, the girl with her pretty, delicate features—were of another type from most of the children who swarmed in that narrow slum. But he had taken it for granted that Mrs. Kay was their mother.

"Who was your father?" he asked.

"He was a scene-shifter at the theatre, sir, and mother was one of the ladies of the theatre," said Bert, with evident pride in the announcement. "We used to live near Drury Lane at one time."